WATCH： Canadian Taxpayers Federation 24th annual Teddy Waste Awards
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Summary
The Teddies are named after Ted Weatherhill, a former federal bureaucrat who racked up $150,000 in food and drink expenses before he was finally fired. While Ted is long gone from government, his legacy lives on in the namesake ceremony, the Teddy Waste Awards, an annual celebration of the best of the worst of government waste. This year, we have 16 nominees across our Federal, Provincial and Municipal categories, in addition to our most prestigious award, the Lifetime Achievement Award for Government Waste.
Transcript
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Florida Director, Chris Sims, and our friendly mascot, Porky the Waste Hater.
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The Teddies are named after Ted Weatherhill, a former federal bureaucrat who racked up $150,000
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in food and drink expenses before he was finally fired. While Ted is long gone from government,
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his legacy lives on in his namesake ceremony, the Teddy Waste Awards. It has become our
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annual celebration of the best of the worst of government waste.
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This year we have a total of 16 nominees across our Federal, Provincial and Municipal categories,
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in addition to our most prestigious award, the Lifetime Achievement Award for Government Waste.
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Well, let's start first with the Municipal category.
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So the first nominee involves a serious case of tree envy.
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In 2019, the City of Winnipeg erected an artificial and reusable Christmas tree
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tree that stood 28 feet tall in front of City Hall. But Mayor Brian Bowman didn't
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think the tree was up to size. This past Christmas the city shelled out another
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two hundred and sixty thousand dollars on major enhancements for the city's
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reusable Christmas tree including a 22 foot tall extension. We don't know
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exactly what the city is compensating for with a 50 foot tall Christmas tree
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but Mayor Bowman needs to know that size isn't everything when it comes to
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taxpayers' money. You know, I like to party as much as the next guy, unless that next guy is
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Sue Gill. He was a bureaucrat at the Thompson-Nicola Regional District in beautiful Kamloops,
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British Columbia, who expensed half a million dollars over five years on fancy meals, booze,
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and jewelry for his crew, in addition to more than $8,000 on a champagne room.
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And what did Kamloops do to make sure that this would never happen again?
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They gave Gill a half a million dollar severance. Rumor is, he plans to spend that money on 62 champagne rooms.
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So, politicians always talk about helping the downtrodden, right? That's their thing.
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But Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson has an odd notion as to who really needs help.
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The city of Ottawa handed out nearly $3 million to a Porsche dealership.
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As Post Media's Jesse Klein pointed out, the money went to building a two-story Porsche dealership
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on top of an existing Audi dealership that's on the same site as a Maserati dealership
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and is just 600 meters from the company's existing Porsche dealerships.
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Seriously, I Google mapped it. It's like a nine-minute walk.
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Rumor is it that Lamborghini and Rolls-Royce are feeling like they're taking a back seat.
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the next nominee is literally flushing taxpayers money down the toilet the city of vancouver is
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apparently so flush with taxpayers cash that is spending 645 000 on an outdoor washroom that
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price tag is surely causing some stomach rumblings for city of vancouver taxpayers a similar facility
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is being installed in prince george but for a third of the price the city of vancouver has
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has yet to come clean on why its deal stinks so much compared to Prince George's.
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So for Edmonton taxpayers, the delayed and over budget Metro Line LRT was the little
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In Edmonton's defense, the city eventually worked out the kinks, but not after spending
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millions that the city is now trying to recoup.
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follow the tracks. The City of Edmonton proved to be much better at covering their tracks
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than building them. And with that, if I could please get the winning envelope.
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Thank you. And the winner of the Municipal Government Category is
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Sooke Gill. Sooke Gill, the former Chief Administrative Officer at the Thompson-Niccolo
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regional district near Kamloops he was expensing an average of one hundred thousand dollars per
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year for five years and you know if you spend that amount of money on jewelry fancy meals and
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popping bottles it might make you popular at the municipal board meetings but it's not going to
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make you many friends with taxpayers who are actually paying your bills now let's move on to
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the provincial nominees how do you scare a polar bear you don't they're huge they're apex predators
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and they're not scared of anything yet the government of manitoba spent 150 000
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replacing diesel tundra buggies with electric vehicles so tourists wouldn't scare away the
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polar bears before spending all that cash taxpayers wish the government had watched
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the raft of youtube videos that show the polar bears sound asleep as the diesel buggies pass on by
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So we're supposed to trust Ontario politicians to oversee a $200 billion budget, but they can't
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get by without a payday advance to cover their own election campaigns. Doug Ford promised to
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end political welfare. Instead, he's giving political parties $60 million in taxpayers'
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money and a payday loan so they can take the cash even earlier. You know, oppositions at
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queens park fight almost everything that ford does he says cheesecake they scream for ice cream that's
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how it usually works but they finally found something they can get for to pass on giving
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themselves more tax dollars can you hear the kumbaya queens park the great thing about netflix
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and chill is that it's a pretty cheap date but staying home on the couch gets pretty expensive
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if you're spending a hundred and forty thousand dollars like the government of newfoundland and
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labrador now the government says that visitors will be able to sit on these sofas once the
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colonial building reopens but taxpayers are demanding sippy cups and cushion covers because
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if four couches cost 140 000 then we better not be seeing a cleaning bill
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so how do you hide a jet that's 127 feet long leave it up to the quebec government in 2015
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quebec it gave bombardier c series 1.3 billion dollars and the last annual report shows that
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loan is now worthless so quebec finally figured out giving bombardier more cash wasn't a good
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idea. So now Quebec is giving the Airbus A220 project a $380 million subsidy instead. Only
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problem here, taxpayers didn't get to see the fine print. See, the Airbus A220, it's just a
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name change. It's the plane formerly known as the Bombard AC series. Rumor has it that they're
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going to go for another branding change, but the next dodgy scheme, its names Enron, was already
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taken the next nominee exemplifies government employees unrelenting commitment to being paid
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overtime the pandemic was hard on us all but one upside is that it gave some people the opportunity
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to relax a little bit reconnect with their families and try to escape the rat race well
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that wasn't the case for a lot of quebec even though they closed their casinos their employees
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we're still able to log 1.9 million dollars in overtime lotto quebec teaches us all a very
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important life lesson just because no one is at the blackjack table it doesn't mean you stop dealing
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and with that if i could get the winning envelope please for our provincial category
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okay and the winner of the provincial category of government waste
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this next nominee consistently says, hold my beer.
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So the NCC is basically a parks and recs board on steroids in Ottawa.
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And it turns out it cost around $11 million to renovate the Prime Minister's cottage mansion at Harrington Lake.
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For the amount the NCC was spending on renovations alone,
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taxpayers instead could have purchased outright Chad Kruger and Avril Lavigne's Los Angeles mansion,
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Halle Berry's lavish getaway in the Laurentians,
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and a super fancy cottage right next to Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn,
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and we'd still have money left over to buy a couple of Lamborghinis.
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The next nominee is a scary sequel to M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense.
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It's Taxpayers See Dead People with Six-Figure Expense Accounts.
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It comes with an all-expenses-paid mansion and a $300,000 per year salary, but apparently even that's not enough.
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When a governor general leaves office, they get a $200,000 per year expense account for the rest of their life and up to six months into the afterlife.
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Hopefully, when a former governor general passes, they rest in peace and don't rack up too many expenses.
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so the next nomination is a federal crown corporation that just can't let the idea of a
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home equity tax go the liberals say they won't put in a home equity tax the conservatives say
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they won't put one in either but that hasn't stopped the canada mortgage and housing corporation
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the cmhc spent 250 000 on a report that recommends a surtax on the value of homes
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Then they turned around and spent another $200,000
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How do you know when it's really cold in Ottawa?
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Politicians put their hands in their own pockets
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during the pandemic many canadians had a tough time took a pay cut lost their job
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maybe even lost their business all while members of parliament were busy giving themselves not one
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not two but three pandemic pay raises the pandemic pay raises range from an extra
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ten thousand dollars for a back venture all the way up to an extra twenty thousand dollars for
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prime minister justin trudeau but can you really blame these politicians for wanting more money
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after all their tax hikes are really making things expensive these days
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So how do you turn a free service into a $1,000 expense?
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In Canada, any police station will come pick up your firearm free of charge
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Most of us are super happy when something's free, but not Canadian heritage.
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So these bureaucrats spent $1,000 talking amongst themselves
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about how to get the police to come pick this thing up for free.
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They even spent hundreds of dollars getting their plans translated into French.
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Taxpayers certainly hope that bureaucrats working for Canadian Heritage
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don't go to Timmy's on their breaks and play roll of the win
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because they're going to turn a free coffee into a $10,000 bill.
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And with that, if I could please get the winning envelope.
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And the winner in the federal category for the 2022 Teddy Waste Awards,
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For spending around $11 million renovating a lake house, including $2.5 million on a backup cottage for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
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Yes, Trudeau has a backup mansion at Arrington Lake.
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Because, you know, if there's paint fumes or hammering happening somewhere, you might have to go sleep in a fancy doghouse.
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And just think about how many Porsche dealerships the city of Ottawa could have subsidized.
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with all that money won't somebody think of the porsche dealerships
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and now our most prestigious award the lifetime achievement award for waste
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it's a good one so past recipients have included everyone from premiers to prime ministers
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to bevota bombardier and the phoenix payroll fiasco the winner put in a lot of solid efforts
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in the past but finally got over the finish line this year and it is canada's climate delegations
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canada sent 276 delegates to the united nations recent cop 26 climate conference in glasgow
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Scotland, the highest of any G7 country. The hosts United Kingdom managed with only 227.
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The Americans sent 133 delegates and the efficient Germans sent 120. It's hard to imagine why it
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takes more than two Canadian delegates to do the work of one American or German delegate.
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Even more bizarre, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland lodged in the wrong city, staying in
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Edinburgh rather than the host city of Glasgow. So now taxpayers are left wondering, did the
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finance minister forget to check Google Maps before booking her trip? And even if rooms in
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Glasgow were full, it's hard to imagine that a deputy prime minister of a G7 nation couldn't
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pull rank. Forcing some bureaucrats to zoom in rather than fly over to Scotland could have freed
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up some rooms for Freeland. And Freeland didn't have to bill taxpayers $3,000 on a luxury chauffeur
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service between the two cities when first-class train tickets between
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Glasgow and Edinburgh were much cheaper and faster. The 2021 conference cost
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more than a million dollars. In 2019, Canada sent the second-largest G20
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delegation to COP25 in Madrid, Spain. That cost taxpayers more than 680,000
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smackers. Canada's COP26 delegation is less efficient than a 1970s 4x4 truck
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pulling a camper up a hill because the result is higher emissions and higher
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taxpayer costs Canada's climate delegations are a worthy recipient of
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this year's lifetime achievement award for government waste and with that we
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would like to thank you very much for coming to the 2022 Teddy Waste Awards
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thank you for coming and yeah if you have any questions we're happy to answer
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them? Yes, we do. Franco, Melanie with the Western Standard. And curious, the Canadian
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Taxpayer Federation did a recent tour across the country with the new debt clock. What were you
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hearing from Canadians? What was on Canadians' minds? Yes, we got a few different types of
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responses. The first one was a shock. The debt clock showed the $1 trillion going up in real
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time, about $1,600 every second. So it was a real shock. And we also had a little spot at the bottom
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that show that each Canadian share was $30,000. And a few times on the street, we heard from
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people like, hey, I don't have $30,000 around to pay Trudeau's and the government's credit
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card bills. So one was kind of a shock. Another one that we heard, which I really empathize with
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is, hey, when is that clock going to start counting down? So I love that response. But really,
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we heard a lot of concern because many Canadians, they want to leave their kids and grandkids with
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a shot at financial success. Right now, each Canadian is on the hook for $30,000 in federal
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debt. By 2070, it's estimated that that could reach $67,000. So it's a huge tax bill that we're
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leaving to future generations because this government is spending like crazy.
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And speaking of some of the inflation and the high prices at the pumps, my question is,
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as much as these are taxes, it seems like it's hitting a particular demographic. It
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seems like it's hitting a lot of families families that don't really have the option to uh use public
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transit for say getting their kids to uh to events and sports and school functions and and whatnot
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it almost you know some would classify it as a as a bit of a punishment task it feels that way what
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do you say to that it feels that way and i i empathize with with it because let me just give
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you a personal story my mom we used to live in small town ontario port hope and she used to work
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in the Toronto area. Well, that's an hour car drive one way. You can't just take your bike to
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work. The public transit is difficult, especially when you have to get to work at certain hours of
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the day or if you have meetings. So for many people in Canada, I mean, fueling up your car
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isn't a nice to have, it's a need to have. And yes, there's these high gas prices, but it's the
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high taxes that make these high prices even more painful. And of course, there's so many things
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going on around the world that Canadian politicians can't directly influence.
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One thing they can influence, though, is how much money they're taking at the pumps.
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And right now, up to 38 percent of the pump price in Canada is taxes alone.
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because of the Trudeau government's carbon tax hike.
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So we think it's extremely tone deaf for the federal government to keep raising
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its carbon tax when Canadians are already struggling to fuel up their cars on the way to work right now.
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And speaking of tone deaf governments, it seems as though the plight of most Canadians who are struggling under the rising inflation, the cost of the pump bills, it sounds like governments are not hearing from the public.
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What do you recommend the average Canadian do in this climate, in this very expensive time?
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What can the average Canadian do to try to influence change?
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They're financially divorced and detached from the realities facing their constituents.
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And this is why we always hammer the pay raise issue.
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Our members of parliament, and they're getting a Teddy nomination from it, gave themselves three pay raises during the pandemic.
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Well, they've become financially divorced from the constituents that they're supposed to represent who have taken a pay cut, maybe lost their job or maybe even lost their business.
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And when you have politicians that are not within the same financial reality of their constituents,
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well, they end up making tone deaf policy decisions, which we're seeing right now, right?
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We've seen all members of parliament, three pay raises during the pandemic. More than 300,000
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federal government employees received a raise during the pandemic, not a single one took a pay
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cut. So I think that is a huge reason why we're getting these tone deaf policies in Ottawa.
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But what Canadians can do, you have to participate in democracy. You have to pick up the phone,
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you have to call your member of parliament what i would suggest doing too is next time you're at
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the pumps take a photo of your receipt send them an email show them how much and how much it's
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costing you and and tell them that they need to ease up and they need to give you some tax relief